


Cracks from up close

by laughingpineapple



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Comedic tones, M/M, Misplaced jealousy, Worldbuilding, quiet moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27698146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: One day, Hedwyn would be a highly regarded authority figure in the Union. In the last days before the revolution, as he was still growing into his potential, he learned from the great thinkers and leaders of his time.Thankfully not by example.
Relationships: Hedwyn & Oralech, Hedwyn & Tariq | The Lone Minstrel, Hedwyn & Volfred Sandalwood, Oralech/Volfred Sandalwood, Volfred Sandalwood/Tariq | The Lone Minstrel
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Cracks from up close

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jasp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasp/gifts).



> Workshopping it out with a good friend always makes a fic twice as lively and I am profoundly thankful to [redacted] for all the fantastic input!

**1\. in which Hedwyn stumbles and finds his balance again**

There was a number of complications inherent in eight people cohabiting in a Blackwagon meant for three, with its three cots, three chairs and last but not least its single toilet, spacious though they were since the Scribes, in their infinite mercy, had foreseen the eventuality that all three of them may be demons at some point in history.

Volfred, fastidious planner that he was, remained well aware of the fact at all times. Which was why that late morning found him not camping out in said toilet, nor in the ‘old folks’ cabin he shared with his oldest friend and his Reader-heir apparent. No, he had climbed all the way up to the larder, roots trailing after him on the wagon's steep ladders, and was carefully, peacefully curled under its small window when Hedwyn slammed the trapdoor open and missed him by an inch.

It was going to be a long day.

Hedwyn, for his part, was just looking for their stash of dried blorberries and was not expecting to find their leader cramped in there like a house plant in dire need of re-potting. The late morning sun cut unforgiving shadows on his skin, tracing all the cracks in patches of dull, dry bark. He was painstakingly applying a wax which appeared to nourish it somewhat, massaging his temples over and over until the wood’s surface was saturated and regained its rich earthy color. Hedwyn felt a pang of worry – the striking bright green of Volfred’s eyes was dim and matted, and for the first time he thought he saw how a deep tiredness had left its mark on his fellow exile down to his roots, that he was paying a price for pushing through all the pain, loss and impossible odds.

“Consider knocking next time, my boy,” Volfred said, eventually, quite possibly to make him stop staring.

“Sorry. I did not mean to intrude. Truth be told, I did not think I’d find this place livelier than a bunch of brooms.”

It occurred to him then – in the same unbridled stream of unprompted thoughts which included the realization that all that was wrong with Volfred’s eyes was the lack of those confident charcoal lines, which brought him down to the level of tired, vulnerable mortals – that he may have put his foot in his mouth with that comparison. Unwilling to linger on whether mentioning lively broomsticks to a sap was a cultural faux pas, and certainly unwilling to ask, Hedwyn did what he did best: he offered his help with that wax business, leaving it to Volfred whether to consider it an apology or a simple act of kindness. It was a very packed space for a lanky sap to comfortably reach the back of his head, Hedwyn figured, and while he noticed that he had brought a small mirror with him, it would not magically grant him eyes on his shoulders. It was only fair to get help.

“I needed to fetch a jar, but that is not urgent,” he added, to explain his presence in the room. Overexplain, really. “Lunch is still a while away.”

Volfred blinked. Hedwyn slowly blinked back, wondering perhaps if he should keep behaving like one does with cats, known to hide in a corner when they’re not looking their best. The thought would, emphatically, _not_ have occurred to him about C. Volfred Sandalwood of all people up to ten minutes earlier, as his mental image of the guy ranged somewhere between ‘as impervious as an evergreen’ and ‘ate a book whole and has been reciting it ever since’, but life was full of surprises.

Just as surprising was Volfred’s sustained silence, as if pondering a loaded, almost painful question. There was a “No” bubbling up in his throat but he kept it at bay for a while more, to an undeniable dramatic effect. By the time he let it out with a sigh, followed by a simple “Please, do take your jar,” Hedwyn had gone through a comprehensive character re-evaluation, culminating in the confirmation of a deep-seated suspicion that power is little but a long and stressful chain of faking it until you make it. Hedwyn was a soldier; orders came from above. He had come to value Volfred’s vision. That idea of freedom, that struggle for knowledge was worth fighting for, and so Hedwyn would pull his weight, for however much a deserter’s actions were worth. But there remained a barrier: as the rare honest leader who knew what he was doing, Volfred did not need the attentiveness Hedwyn bestowed upon his peers and the people under his care. They both remained autonomous and were all the more efficient for it, or so he’d thought. But then, if the Nightwings' guide were to lapse, who would notice?

There was also, and that went without saying, the matter of keeping a safe distance from all the judging. Grapevine had it (Pamitha, via Rukey, and Scribes only knew where _he_ ’d found out about it) that the grand revolutionary spirit used to be a teacher in the Commonwealth in decades past and, as the saying goes, the birch did not change its stripes. The only way to make it out unscathed from that piercing gaze was to keep one’s shield up, leaving less impressions overall to minimize the odds of leaving bad impressions, which would be forever marked in burning shame.

True to form, Hedwyn felt watched, rather intensely at that, as he crawled through bags and boxes to look for the elusive blorberries. He found them in the last place he looked in, as these things often go, and made his way back to the trapdoor.

“So how’d the exam go, prof?” he asked with a sideways smile. “Did I pass?”

“You know you did.” Volfred was massaging the back of his neck, squinting as the wax took its effect in a way that did nothing whatsoever to dispel Hedwyn’s image of a fussy cat caught by surprise in its secret spot and playing it cool. “My evaluations are not wrong.”

“Your preconceived evaluations, sir.”

“Thoroughly informed.”

“So every day we have to live up to them?”

“Nobody has to. Nevertheless, you do.”

“If I may… that sounds like a brittle way to build a network.”

“You may, and in so doing you lead me to ask: show me a non-brittle way, then. I will be waiting.”

“What I would do, if I were in charge? I don’t know. Bonding first, recruiting later would be my first bet.”

“I have time, my boy, but not that much time.”

“I just can’t… ...forgive me for asking, sir, are you alright? I do not mean to intrude.”

“Oh, ‘tis this accursed dampness, nothing more.” Volfred smiled. “The journey to the Downside has a way of leaving us more vulnerable, right as this land opens its maw to swallow us whole. Thank you for asking.”

“I am relieved to hear this is the case. And I hope you shall take my words in the same stride, as I ask sincerely, and with admiration, as your organization grows by the day, but I just cannot fathom how it can be possible for one person to build something so grand without… without anyone you can trust implicitly.”

A long and heavy silence followed. Volfred was not angry at him, this he could see; inasmuch as he was angry at all, and not solely, immensely sad, that anger was aimed at something much bigger than an exiled boy, but at what, precisely, Hedwyn could not tell.

“Bertrude understands me, and I her. So Tariq,” he said at last.

True on both accounts, for sure, and yet that sentence had a hole in the middle. As Hedwyn might say: Jodariel got him, and Rukey too (at least if he were to share a number of private and intense walks with the latter in a way that would become the focus of so much gossip and conjecturing, but that was rather beside the point). A statement like that, it was missing its center, where Fikani should have been.

**2\. in which Hedwyn sees another one stumble and raises an eyebrow**

In one hand, Hedwyn held the grocery list for the day’s stop at Hollowroot’s market, which he had reached alone, on foot, so that the general populace not be made aware of the existence of flying wagons. It did not feel fair, but it was what it was, part and parcel of having been chosen for the sanctity of the Rites.

His other hand clasped the jar of _imp’s mane_ mushroom powder, neatly packed in single-dose bags, which was the last uncrossed item of said list. Procuring the meat cuts, dried beans and reagents had been easy enough, but imp’s mane favored dry summers and the latest weather cataclysms had done no favors to the mushroom harvests of the prairie.

Over his hand was a demon’s blackened claw.

Hedwyn squinted to his left, toward the rest of the demon. The figure hid under a cloak and a mass of flowing red-hemmed scarves, one of which he’d fashioned over his face in a way that covered most of it. Even then, there was no hiding nor mistaking the four bright blue horns that conferred him an air of doomed glory, like Soliam Murr’s very fate once again treaded the Downside.

Soliam Murr was, however, generally known to be a pleasant guy by the time he’d grown those appendages. Nobody would not have minded discussing the finest points of customer courtesy with the Demon Scribe himself. But this guy? The memory of the strange scathing words he’d hurled at him during the Rites was still fresh in Hedwyn’s mind.

“Sir, I got it first,” said Hedwyn in the most patient tone he could muster.

“The boy is kind and generous,” growled Oralech to the shopkeeper, ignoring Hedwyn altogether. “He says he wishes to leave the jar to me.”

The shopkeeper, a diminutive cur who was known among certain circles of exiles as having a way with words when he put his mind to it, must have judged his diplomatic talents unfit for the challenge. He promptly sided with the bigger guy, repeating to Hedwyn that the other customer did in fact get it first, sorry, come back next month.

Oralech’s grasp never tightened; it did not need to. He threw ten sols at the shopkeeper with his free hand. Hedwyn retreated, throwing his arms in the air in frustration.

That is not to say he gave up and did not follow him. It wasn’t like those horns were hard to spot. He walked up to Oralech again in a clearing at the end of the market, surrounded by silverwood trees.

“That was cheating.”

“Oh, no. Life was unfair? Such an unusual occurrence. My condolences.”

“Drop it. I’m not scared of you,” Hedwyn said, evoking a tad more courage than he was feeling at the moment as he squared up against the demon.

“The shopkeeper did not know that.”

“And for that, Jodi’s horns are going to give her headaches for the next month?”

Oralech shrugged and pointed a blackened claw at his own horns. Those things were heavy, putting a strain on his thick neck. Imp-mane infusions, and not much else, were known to give relief to some of the pain that came from that constant tension.

“Fair! Alright! That jar’s enough for two, we can split! I’ll pay you for my part, of course.”

“Boy,” Oralech addressed him with a spite that felt frankly unwarranted by the current situation. “Let me get this clear: I only care for my own.”

So Jodi with her bravery and reliability and frugality and curmudgeon kindness would have to suffer? Curses, even Ignarius could do with a better lot in life, all things considered. Lendel's buddies weren't looking too hot either, last they squared off against them. And this guy – _this guy_ – waltzed in like everybody else was sunshine and rainbows.

“Aren’t demons, at least, your own, doctor?” he addressed him. “Isn’t this exile painful enough without lifting each other up in the face of our unfair punishment?” He could see from Oralech’s face that an impassioned speech wasn’t going to cut it if he couldn’t find common ground – maybe not even then, but it was worth trying. “Alright. Let me start again. You wear the raiments, you’ve heard pages of the Book. Is this what Triesta Tithis would have wanted? Is this Golathanian’s justice? The Alpha-Chief’s lesson, even, as we learn to survive together in this land?”

Which, to his credit, struck a chord, or hit a nerve, at least, which one may count as progress from the previous unimpressed smirk, if one were feeling particularly optimistic. Oralech stomped a hoof in his direction. Hedwyn stepped back. Oralech closed the distance between them again and snarled at him, and all of Tariq’s tales about the Nightwings’ doctor whose heart was sworn to peace vanished like morning mist under a torrential downpour.

“The Scribes are a relic of the past,” he spat out. “A fanciful idyll of times long gone and long perverted. What’s here now is me, you… Tinderstauf… the Theyn harp, that cretin Ashpaws… the witch Udmildhe… Sandalwood. This," he said, nodding at his own words, "is the world we live in.”

“Yes, I know, and one of them is working to change all this.”

“All of them are, for their own ends.”

“Oh, come on now.”

“Listen to yourself!” Oralech shot back, in disbelief himself. “You defend him! Openly, standing right here! Unbelievable.”

“...why shouldn’t I?”

“Do not tempt my patience, boy. Be honest.”

This conversation was shooting off into wild uncharted territory, even for the Downside, and whatever unspoken words were there were in a language Hedwyn could not understand. He frowned.

“Back on the Bloodborder, I enlisted to get food on my table and to have somewhere to belong. That turned out to be a bad move. I’m more careful now. I have seen what the Nightwings offer. This plan deserves my loyalty.”

And Oralech laughed, just like that. Loudly, at length, with a hint of desperation, seeking a catharsis that didn’t come. When he calmed down again, he said:

“Well, call me for tea when he casts you aside as well. Or don’t. The most generous thing I can to for the lot of you is to take my freedom and get out of everyone’s way.”

“Please-”

“Enough. But well fought. Tell him he picked his unspoiled goods well.”

With that, in one last burst of anger, he was gone. Without turning around, he threw behind him five doses of the powder, enough perhaps to last until the market day in Wakingwood and hope for better luck there.

Hedwyn frowned harder.

**3\. in which Hedwyn extends a hand**

Pickling queels was a thankless job, but someone had to do it, so Hedwyn was grateful for Tariq’s help during that never-ending chore, and for his company as well. To be elbows deep in queels entrails side by side with the ethereal minstrel felt like a strange breach in reality, like the kitchen sink was too mundane for him and would be filled with stars at any moment now, but it was easy to get along with the fellow, as long as one didn’t stop to think about the sheer implausibility of it. As if he, Hedwyn, were a simple shape drawn on the ground which turned out to have two, maybe three sides in common with a wholly alien construct, whose unfathomable angles reached into planes unknown.

He was also, quite famously among their chatty little group, capable of keeping his own business to himself, and Hedwyn could really do with a confidant but would have rather thrown himself in the pyre in just his underwear than bring this particular topic up with Jodi.

“I spoke with Oralech yesterday,” he spat out all at once, when his kitchen knife was safely pressed against the cutting board, so the distress would not cost him a finger.

Tariq, thankfully, just nodded.

“I think he’s… jealous?” said Hedwyn.

“Aye… that much he made clear during the rite he usurped to challenge the Nightwings.”

“I mean, yes, of course,” he said, wondering exactly how many details Tariq had come to learn of an event he did not attend. The perfect confidant, indeed. “If I had all of this, this place, this company, and an accident took it all from me, I would be jealous too, from the bottom of my heart. But… I mean...”

He shook his head. “I have reasons to believe he misunderstood the… oh Scribes, I can’t say this.”

Tariq stood still. It felt encouraging, somehow.

“...the nature of my… of my relationship with Volfred! Or, at least, Volfred’s intentions. The reason I was hired.”

Tariq raised a perfect moonlit eyebrow.

“...he did misunderstand, did he not?” Hedwyn asked, dreading that silence. He’d ended up holding onto the handle of his knife with both hands, as a lifesaver in this sea of awkwardness, and he felt sick already.

“You are well aware, sir, that it is not my place to answer.”

“Yes, well, who else am I supposed to ask, Sandra? Ti’zo? You were there… when Oralech lived here… you knew him. You knew _them_. Please.”

In the end Tariq washed his hand and adjusted the brim of his hat before settling on an answer. “Sandalwood’s heart is complex and, may the Scribes tend to his wounds, mourning. All the same... aye, I believe it is not overstepping my role to say that it is a fact that Oralech was wrong in his conjectures, if what you say reflects his true beliefs.”

Hedwyn got an answer which put breath in his lungs again, and on the other hand, in the inscrutable givings and takings of the world, also an answer which left him with yet another question he could not ask to the person concerned, just like he could not, for the life of him, ask Oralech directly if he meant what it sounded like he meant. As it happened, the whole connection between the erstwhile Nightwings had blindsided him because of the way he had always seen Volfred and Tariq act during their travels together. If Volfred’s heart was so deep in mourning, what exactly were he and the herald doing during their frequent, long and private walks together, marvel of the Blackwagon and source of ever so much chatter? It had always felt like such a simple truth that simply went unsaid. He envisioned for a moment asking Bertrude about it, or Ti’zo, getting an answer and at the same time finding out an inappropriate detail about them in turn, and so getting ever deeper into this web of awkwardness. He clung to his reassurance and kept chopping queels without any further questions. Tariq took to humming, filling their silence with a pleasant tune.

It took a while for Hedwyn to put his finger (in amidst the diced queels) on what, exactly, felt off about Tariq’s words, even accounting for the minstrel’s oddities.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. Tariq, as always, offered him his polite attention. “But you don’t mourn someone who is still alive.”

“Most certainly. However, is possible to mourn lost opportunities.”

“Fair. But they can still look at the future. At least, if Oralech can see past himself. I can’t say it feels likely hearing the guy rant now, but hey, it’s the Downside, weirder things have happened.”

“Aye. They can, and they should.”

Two days later, as such was the way with Tariq’s veiled, scattered conversations, that “they” eventually bared itself to mean “the two of them, but not I”, as the herald’s existence was tied to the Rites, to the Downside, and the Rites were ending and his time was ending along with them. It was convenient to think of Tariq as a remote and somehow dutiful celestial body, separate from their messy mortal lives. But the soldiers in the Nightwings’ ranks, at least, and Hedwyn chief among them, should have known better than to equate devotion to duty to a life devoid of sentiment, and his heart broke for the lone minstrel, whose fate orbited so far beyond their reach. Sandalwood and Oralech can, Sandalwood and Oralech should, he’d said. But not he. Tariq saw no future for himself past the turning of the Rites and how was that fair retribution for the strange friendship he'd offered all of them?

Hedwyn walked up to him on a laundry day on the slopes of Mount Alodiel and tapped his shoulder with a firm, warm smile set on his face.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, Tariq. Have you ever composed chants for the revolution?”

“The one to come?” Tariq asked back, noble and beautiful and half-buried in crumpled bedsheets as the clean cold winds caressed his hair.

“Whichever you prefer. The old one is fine too?”

“No… the one to come. Several. Why do you ask, sir?”

Hedwyn’s smile grew.

“I would like you to teach them to me, if you’d like. So that one day, when the time comes, the people will sing with your voice.”


End file.
